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Professor  E.   Fritz 


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VANADIUM 


Its  Services  in 
Automobile  Matin 


VANADIUM 

ITS    SERVICES 
IN    AUTOMOBILE    MANUFACTURE 


BY  J.  KENT   SMITH 


BEING    A    REPORT    OF    AN    ADDRESS    AND    DISCUSSION 

BEFORE  THE  ASSOCIATION   OF  LICENSED  AUTOMOBILE 

MANUFACTURERS,  IN  NEW  YORK  CITY,  MARCH  7,  1907, 

WITH    FIVE    TABLES    OF    TESTS    APPENDED 


AMERICAN  VANADIUM  Co. 


FRICK  BUILDING, 


PITTSBURGH,  PA. 


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VANADIUM   STEELS 

By  J.    KENT   SMITH 

STEEL  is  a  very  complex  body ;    to  para- 
phrase a  satirical  remark  of  an  eminent 
scientist,  it  is  so  complex  that  even  the  young- 
est may  not  form  a  fixed  opinion  regarding  it. 

Everybody  will  agree  that  during  the  past 
two  decades  the  demands  on  steel  applied  to 
special  purposes  have  changed  greatly,  and 
steels  which  satisfactorily  met  the  engineering 
requirements  of  twenty  years  ago  are  unsuit- 
able to-day.  Then  if  a  steel  stretched  nicely — 
had  good  elongation  —  it  was  supposed  to  be  all 
right,  provided  it  showed  the  required  tensile 
strength.  But  although  steel  may  have  good 
static  qualities,  that  is,  it  may  have  a  high 
tensile  strength,  elongate  greatly  and  bend  well 
under  a  steady  load,  when  it  is  subjected  to 
repeated  work,  undergoing  vibration  accom- 
panied by  shocks,  big  or  little,  and  strains 
which  may  perhaps  be  in  the  nature  of  alter- 
nating bends,  it  must  possess  other  qualities 
to  enable  it  to  meet  such  entirely  different 
conditions. 

If  we  take  a  steel  the  elastic  limiv  ojf  ^iiich 
is  represented  by  the  figure  10  Qtite  any  unit' 
desired),  and  this  is  subjected  ta  -  $ -senes?  .of 
strains  at  regular  intervals,  fairly  rapidly 
repeated,  each  equivalent  in  strength  to,  say, 
the  figure  5,  in  due  time  that  steel  will  break. 
Nicola  Tesla  puts  forward  an  extreme  in 
asserting  that  if  a  brick  were  to  be  placed 
on  the  roof  of  a  high  building  and  could  be 

5 


890542 


vibrated  sufficiently  rapidly,  the  building  would 
fall  to  pieces  and  topple  into  the  street.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  steel  be  subjected  to 
strains  to  the  same  number  and  at  the  same 
intervals,  the  strength  of  each  of  which  is  repre- 
sented only  by  the  number  2j^,  it  also  will 
break,  but  in  much  more  than  double  the 
time. 

In  effect,  as  these  strains  approach  more 
nearly  to  the  elastic  limit,  the  deterioration 
of  the  steel  is  enormously  hastened.  This 
fact  assumes  supreme  practical  importance 
when  it  is  noted  that  this  deterioration  does 
not  take  place  at  the  same  rate  in  all  steels, 
those  which  best  resist  such  deterioration 
being  said  to  withstand  "  fatigue  "  best. 

Vanadium  has  been  proved  to  be  an  alloy 
so  preeminent  in  conferring  to  steel  resistance 
to  fatigue  that  it  practically  stands  alone  among 
alloys. 

It  is  true  in   the  average  mild  steel,  — 

though  not  in  all  mild  steels, —  that  with  a  good 

static  ductility,  there  is  generally  corresponding 

good  behavior  under  dynamic  strains,  but  this 

',  relati4rr  is  by  no  means  invariable,  and  it  is  in 

'such'  cases  <&sr  the  latter  that  we  have  the  so- 

f  ;  :  ;:  '//;;''/og:Hedr:'fn\y3t'erious  failures." 

In  the  course  of  about  fifteen  years,  the 
author  has  seldom  found  a  "mysterious ' '  failure 
where  the  cause  was  not  found  to  be  dynamic 
(in  the  few  cases  where  the  cause  was  static 
the  "dynamics"  were,  of  course,  bad).  In 
many  cases  static  tests  showed  good  tensile 


figures,  the  chemical  analysis  was  good,  and  yet 
the  steel  would  not  "  stand  "  at  all. 

By  way  of  illustration,  an  extreme  case 
may  be  cited :  Two  bars  of  the  same  steel 
were  taken  ;  one  was  pulled  in  the  tensile  ma- 
chine, the  test  figures  obtained  being  very 
satisfactory ;  the  other  (and  similar)  piece  was 
dropped  on  the  floor  and  broke  in  two.  In 
one  case,  the  load  was  so  applied  that  the 
material  had  time  to  adjust  itself  to  the  condi- 
tions ;  in  the  other  case,  a  shock  stress  was 
applied  and  the  material  did  not  have  time  to 
adjust  itself  to  conditions. 

Let  us  take  an  every-day  case  somewhat 
analogous :  In  many  stores  may  be  noticed  an 
advertisement  of  a  cement,  this  advertisement 
taking  the  form  of  a  tripod,  hanging  from 
which  is  a  dinner  plate  broken  across  the 
middle,  and  held  together  with  cement,  a 
weight  being  suspended  from  the  plate.  If 
you  should  lift  up  the  weight  (even  first  having 
replaced  it  by  a  lesser  one)  for  an  inch  or  so 
and  let  it  fall,  the  plate  will  break  in  two. 
Here  we  have  a  strain  applied  (1)  steadily  or 
(2)  suddenly. 

It  is  said,  and  advisedly,  that  automobile 
construction  has  to  a  much  greater  degree  than 
any  other  industry  forced  the  steel  manufacturer 
to  make  a  better  product.  It  has  done  more 
for  special  steel  than  anything  else  in  the  world 
because  its  demands  are  so  drastic  that  the  only 
material  suitable  is  the  best;  if  a  steel  will 
make  an  automobile  spring  it  will  make  very 


nearly  any  spring,  likewise  if  a  steel  will  make 
an  automobile  axle  it  should  be  excellent  ma- 
terial for  any  kind  of  axle. 

When  automobiles  were  first  made  steel 
was  not  what  it  is  to-day,  but  neither  were  auto- 
mobiles what  they  are  to-day,  and  if  the  steels 
which  were  available  then  were  the  only  steels 
available  now,  there  would  certainly  be  dire 
trouble  for  all  concerned.  The  manufacturers 
were  put  "on  their  mettle"  when  compelled 
to  meet  the  severe  requirements  of  modern 
engineering,  and,  in  passing,  it  may  be  noted 
that  the  great  majority  lost  themselves  in  taking 
it  for  granted  that  if  they  could  improve  the 
strength  of  steel  and  retain  its  ductility  there 
would  be  a  corresponding  improvement  in  serv- 
ice. They  were  right  only  partially.  In  the 
high-speed  steam  engines  of  to-day,  85  to  90 
per  cent,  of  the  strains  and  stresses  put  on  the 
metal  are  dynamically  applied,  while  only  per- 
haps 10  or  15  per  cent,  are  applied  statically. 
It  is  not  a  common-sense  view  to  confine  atten- 
tion to  that  10  or  15  per  cent,  and  to  let  the  85 
per  cent,  take  care  of  itself  and  "trust  to  luck." 
More  attention  should  have  been  given  to  a 
study  of  the  dynamic  conditions  in  the  past ; 
however,  everybody  is  now  beginning  to  pay 
more  heed  to  "dynamics." 

Some  steel  makers  might  say  that  "the 
ordinary  tests  are  quite  good  enough  ;  there  is 
enough  work  in  them  without  introducing  addi- 
tional work. ' '  Now,  it  is  not  proposed  to  intro- 
duce any  more  work ;  what  is  desired  is  that 


materials  should  be  subjected  to  tests  having 
some  relation  to  the  life  conditions  which  they 
are  going  to  endure.  It  is  not  a  logical  pro- 
posal to  test  a  steel  that  will  make  a  crank-shaft 
for  a  gasoline  engine  running  1,000  or  1,200 
revolutions  a  minute,  receiving  perhaps  two 
impacts  every  revolution,  and  where  also  the 
question  of  journal  wear  has  to  be  considered, 
by  exactly  the  same  formula  as  a  steel  for 
I-beams  or  bridge  construction,  where  a  large 
percentage  of  the  work  is  static  —  in  the  lat- 
ter case  it  is  largely  devoted  to  holding  the 
structure's  own  weight. 

The  author's  attention  was  first  directed, 
many  years  ago,  to  vanadium  through  the 
investigation  of  a  specimen  of  Swedish  iron  that 
had  done  marvels  in  work  and  had  succeeded 
where  everything  else  had  been  tried  and 
failed.  It  gave  excellent  results  on  the 
static  machine,  though  nothing  wonderful ;  it 
also  gave  a  pure  analysis.  Micro-analysis  in 
those  days  was  not  what  it  is  to-day,  but  the 
microscope  revealed  a  normal  appearance. 
That  steel  contained  a  considerable  amount 
of  vanadium.  Most  Swedish  irons  contain  a 
little;  one  or  two  varieties  contain  quite  an 
amount,  but  they  are  small  in  quantity.  In 
one  instance  such  an  iron  was  in  the  hands  of  a 
comparatively  few  men  who  really  did  not  know 
where  the  great  benefit  lay  in  this  material ; 
they  knew  it  gave  a  good  pure  analysis,  but  that 
was  all 'they  knew  about  it  chemically.  It  was 
observed  by  one  or  two  makers  in  Sheffield  who 


used  it  that  they  could  get  their  best  results 
only  when  they  employed  it.  The  point  was 
investigated  by  the  speaker,  who  determined, 
then  and  there,  to  make  an  exhaustive  study  of 
the  application  of  vanadium  to  the  steel  in- 
dustry, believing  that  it  was  all  going  to  be  done 
in  a  very  short  time.  In  this  he  was  mistaken. 
He  began  by  reading  up  what  work  had 
been  done,  for  several  persons  had  spasmodi- 
cally made  various  trials,  but  the  reports  were 
vague  and  contradictory.  There  may  be  many 
explanations  of  this  outside  of  the  personal 
equation.  Here  are  two  :  first,  vanadium  is  a 
very  "elusive"  element  and  it  does  not  follow 
that  if  a  certain  quantity  of  vanadium  is  put  into 
a  batch  of  steel  that  that  vanadium  really  goes 
into  the  steel.  Vanadium  can  be  added  con- 
sistently and  commercially,  but  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  if  one  throws  a  few  pieces 
of  vanadium  haphazard  into  an  open -hearth 
cast  that  the  steel  contains  vanadium.  The 
majority  of  the  published  steel  tests  alluded  to 
above  showed  the  effect  of  certain  vanadium 
additions.  The  speaker  was  lucky  enough  to 
secure  one  which  purported  to  show  the  effect  of 
the  addition  of  .5%  of  vanadium ;  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  sample  contained  .17%  ;  although 
.5%  had  been  added,  it  had  not  been  added 
properly.  Secondly,  there  is  enormous  rear- 
rangement in  the  static  and  dynamic  properties 
of  vanadium  steels  at  the  point  of  recalescence, 
in  what  is  called  in  metallurgy  '  <  subsaturated  ' ' 
steel,  that  is,  a  steel  which  contains  free  ferrite. 
10 


In  such  steel  the  carbon  exists  in  combina- 
tion with  a  certain  amount  of  iron  and  this 
compound  of  carbon  and  iron  is  alloyed  with  a 
certain  amount  of  soft  iron  and  forms  what  is 
called  pearlite,  this  pearlite  being  distributed 
through  the  main  "  back-grqund  "  of  soft  car- 
bonless iron,  called  ferrite.  If  heat  is  applied 
to  a  bar  of  steel,  after  awhile  it  will  reach  a 
point  where  its  pearlite  is  decomposed  and  the 
carbide  goes  into  solid  solution  in  the  ferrite. 
While  there  is  work  done  in  changing  the  state 
of  the  carbon,  the  bar  does  not  get  any  hotter ; 
when  this  work  is  finished  the  temperature  once 
more  steadily  rises.  On  cooling  again,  the 
carbon  or  carbide  is  thrown  out  of  solution  at  a 
fixed  temperature  point  and  reforms  pearlite, 
sensible  cooling  being  delayed  during  this  trans- 
formation. This  is  a  very  crude  explanation 
of  the  phenomena  of  calescence  and  reca- 
lescence,  which  in  subsaturated  points  take 
place  generally  in  the  cherry  red  zone  of 
temperature. 

As  some  of  the  bars  of  which  results  were 
recorded  had  been  finished  cool,  some  had  been 
annealed  at  blood  red  heat,  others  annealed  at 
bright  cherry  heat,  and  so  on,  the  static  results, 
which  were  the  only  ones  noticed,  were  naturally 
contradictory. 

The  speaker  determined  to  go  through  the 
whole  investigation  systematically  and  from  the 
very  beginning.  He  had  early  recognized  the 
value  of  dynamics  and  found  that  while  the 
strength  of  steel  might  be  increased  by  means 
11 


of  some  alloys  without  impairment  of  its  duc- 
tility, still  their  introduction  often  caused  a 
great  deal  of  dynamic  deterioration,  and  as  the 
quantity  of  the  alloy  went  up,  the  dynamic 
properties,  as  a  general  rule,  went  away  down, 
so  that  what  was  given  with  one  hand  was 
unconsciously  in  a  great  measure  taken  back 
with  the  other. 

A  certain  amount  of  information  only  is 
obtained  with  usual  rotary  vibration  tests,  due 
to  variation  in  the  elastic  limit  of  the  metals 
tested,  so  that  the  alternating  strains  which  are 
put  on  by  the  simple  vibration  produce  a  fiber 
strain  that  is  not  equally  removed  from  those 
elastic  limits,  the  importance  of  which  point  in 
regard  to  rate  of  deterioration  has  already 
been  noted ;  on  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  a 
rapidly  repeated  alternating  bend  accompanied 
by  impact,  then  the  "fundamental"  quality 
of  the  material  to  resist  vibratory  deterioration 
is  obtained.  In  the  speaker's  opinion,  it  is  a 
combination  of  these  two  tests  —  the  test  of 
simple  vibration  and  the  alternating  vibratory 
impact  —  which  is  going  to  show  a  great  deal. 
Something  must  be  known  about  the  static 
quality  of  the  steel,  what  its  strength  is  —  and 
useful  strength  be  it  remembered  is  represented 
by  the  elastic  limit,  therefore  the  static  elastic 
limit  of  the  material  must  be  ascertained. 

The  ordinary  factor  of  safety  based  on  the 
tensile  strength  of  the  material  is  certainly  mis- 
leading, as  the  formula  used  in  calculating  it 
does  not  take  any  account  of  the  proportion  of 
12 


the  elastic  limit.  If  the  elastic  limit  were 
always  exactly  proportionate  to  the  tensile 
strength,  that  would  be  quite  in  order,  but  such 
is  not  so;  in  some  cases  it  is  50  per  cent.,  in 
others  60,  in  others  80,  some  specimens  even 
give  90  and  yet  show  a  big-  ductility.  Before 
it  is  possible  to  deduce  a  true  factor  of  safety,  it 
is  necessary  to  know  the  elastic  limit  and  the 
fundamental  property  of  the  material  to  resist 
what  may  be  called  molecular  disintegration. 

One  steel  may  prove  almost  infinitely 
better  than  another  in  service  and  at  the  same 
time  the  inferior  steel  may  show  an  equally 
good  factor  of  safety  on  the  present  accepted 
formula  where  the  true  limit  of  static  strength 
is  not  considered  and  questions  of  fatigue 
resistance  are  entirely  neglected. 

It  was  the  speaker's  desire  to  go  into  all 
these  points  as  fully  as  possible,  and  he  worked 
without  intermission  from  the  spring  of  1901 
until  Christmas,  1904,  when  some  of  his  results 
were  communicated  to  the  Institution  of  Me- 
chanical Engineers  of  England.  These  figures 
were  practical  as  well  as  academic,  as  he  then 
had  the  privilege  of  being  in  a  works  composed 
of  three  divisions :  a  special  steel,  a  hydraulic, 
and  a  boiler  department. 

After  making  the  original  carbon  crucible 
steels,  he  worked  steadily  on  the  alloy  steels 
and  many  types  of  vanadium  steel,  after  which 
he  made  them  by  the  open-hearth  process  on 
a  small  scale,  then  on  a  larger  scale,  trying 
them  in  the  works  referred  to  for  the  better 

13 


part  of  a  year  (where  there  were  several  difficult 
propositions  in  «  hydraulic  work  to  contend 
with);  when  the  first  figures  were  published, 
he  had  learned  enough  to  be  convinced  of  the 
absolute  superiority  of  vanadium  steels  over  all 
other  steels. 

In  the  course  of  these  experiments  he 
found  that  vanadium  not  only  imparted  extra 
dynamic  qualities  to  pure  steel,  but  had  a  static 
intensifying  action  on  another  alloy,  such  as 
chrome  or  nickel.  A  great  deal  of  the  work 
was  done  with  chrome,  and  for  automobile  con- 
struction, he  has  worked  almost  entirely  with 
chrome -vanadium. 

Broadly  speaking,  as  before  stated,  it  was 
found  that  if  another  alloy  be  added  so  as  to 
greatly  increase  strength,  the  "dynamics"  suffer 
severely;  but  by  making  use  of  the  static  inten- 
sifying property  of  vanadium  among  its  other 
qualities,  one  is  able  to  use  a  much  smaller  pro- 
portion of  these  alloys,  which  are  in  themselves  in 
large  quantity  mischievous  dynamically,  while 
at  the  same  time  the  original  dynamic  value  of 
the  carbonless  iron  base  is  greatly  enhanced. 

The  author  has  no  hesitation  whatever  in 
saying  that  chrome-vanadium  steel  is  the 
finest  steel  the  world  has  ever  seen  for  moving- 
machinery  parts,  and  believes  he  has  well 
named  it :  "Anti-fatigue  steel. ' ' 

There  is  no  one  vanadium  steel  that  does 
all  things.  It  is  necessary  to  make  all  kinds 
and  grades  of  vanadium  steel  for  different 
purposes.  Before  the  speaker  are  samples  of 

14 


some  of  these  types.  One  of  these,  a  knotted 
sample,  is  an  open -hearth  chrome-vanadium 
steel  of  the  type  used  for  springs ;  its  extreme 
ductility  is  apparent  by  the  cold  knotting  of  the 
annealed  bar.  The  sharp  end  was  quenched 
from  about  900  deg. C.  in  ordinary  water;  it 
scratches  glass.  That  is  a  combination  of  soft- 
ness and  hardness  in  one  material  which  is  diffi- 
cult to  beat.  With  regard  to  alternating  tests 
on  that  type  of  steel :  when  any  steel  is 
tempered,  its  dynamic  resistance  beyond  its 
elastic  limit  goes  down.  A  piece  of  the  best 
carbon  spring  steel  made  in  the  crucible  was 
selected,  one  piece  annealed ;  a  sample  of  vana- 
dium spring  steel  was  tempered  as  for  a  spring ; 
and  the  tempered  vanadium  steel  was  superior 
dynamically  to  the  annealed  carbon  steel.  In 
the  English  conditions  of  alternating  stress  test 
where  the  free  length  is  perhaps  four  inches, 
the  specimen  y%"  square  and  a  permanent  set 
-of  about  %"  a  side  is  given,  the  carbon  steel 
annealed  stood  250,  the  carbon  steel  tempered 
stood  about  40 ;  the  vanadium  steel  annealed 
stood  over  500  and  the  vanadium  steel  tempered 
stood  between  350  and  400.  Now,  under  this 
test,  be  it  noted,  it  is  not  that  because  one 
stands  double  the  number  of  alternating  im- 
pacts it  is  only  twice  as  good  steel.  We  have 
the  question  of  alternating  impact  under  life 
conditions  and  under  them  (though  we  hope 
the  steel  will  never  break)  it  may  break  at  the 
end  of  6  or  12  months.  In  this  machine  the 
steel  is  broken  by  fatigue  in  a  minute  or  so ; 

15 


the  test  has  been  most  drastic  as  regards  the 
stresses  applied  and  the  material  has  no  time  to 
readjust  itself  in  the  slightest  degree.  There 
can  be  no  factor  of  comparison  in  test  and  life 
conditions  unless  the  life  conditions  are  con- 
stant. In  automobiling,  for  instance,  no  one 
can  tell  what  stones  are  going  to  be  hit  on  the 
road,  while  each  stone  hit  means  a  shock.  The 
life  conditions  must  vary  considerably  and  there- 
fore it  is  not  possible  to  get  an  absolute  compar- 
ison figure,  but  the  probability  is  that  taking 
the  average  life  conditions  the  comparison  of  the 
two  would  be  on  a  curve  of  high  degree,  so 
that  two  to  one  under  testing  conditions  would 
mean  something  like  one  thousand  to  one  if  the 
tenth  power  represented  life  conditions. 

The  speaker  believes  that  vanadium  steels 
of  all  grades  have  been  subjected  to  nearly  all 
tests  known,  and  everybody  who  has  tested 
them  has  spoken  well  of  them. 

This  roughly  is  a  brief  general  history  of 
what  vanadium  can  do  in  steel.  The  different 
grades  of  steel  have  not  been  touched  upon. 
The  grades  suited  to  automobile  work  princi- 
pally made  are : 

1st.  A  grade  suitable  for  crankshafts, 
transmission  shafts,  and  driving  axles ; 

2d.  Another  grade  for  connecting  rods 
and  very  often  for  light  axles ; 

3d.     Another  for  stub  axles ; 

4th.     Another  for  springs ; 

5th.     Another  for  mesh  gears; 

6th.     Another  for  case  hardening,  etc. ,  etc. 

16 


Very  thorough  microscopic  study  has  been 
given  by  the  speaker  to  the  conditions  of  case 
hardening.  In  case  hardening  there  are  five 
scientific  principles  which  must  be  considered 
to  assure  success.  Everyone  will  assuredly  agree 
that  no  tempering  steel  should  be  case  hardened ; 
the  core  of  the  bar  must  be  strong  and  tough  after 
it  is  quenched.  Therefore,  begin  low  and  finish 
high,  rather  than  begin  high  at  first  and  then 
fall  over  the  top.  The  idea  is  to  have  the  core 
approach  in  quality  as  nearly  as  possible  to 
the  material  that  is  put  in  crank  shafts,  but 
it  must  be  after  the  bar  is  carburized  and 
quenched  that  the  conditions  inside  are  analo- 
gous to  the  tempered  shaft,  thus  it  is  necessary 
to  start  from  two  different  points  of  view  in 
order  to  arrive  at  the  one  final  goal. 

Here  are  two  practical  instances  which 
demonstrate  the  dynamic  superiority  of  vana- 
dium. One  automobile  manufacturer  could 
not  get  a  steel  to  stand  certain  work,  and 
the  trouble  was  diagnosed  by  the  author  as  a 
question  entirely  of  alternating  impact.  In 
March,  1904,  this  manufacturer  was  given  six 
vanadium  steel  axles  of  a  type  best  fitted  to 
resist  such  conditions,  the  understanding  being 
that  they  were  to  be  put  on  trial  cars  and 
punished  severely,  so  as  to  form  a  fairly  quick 
opinion  of  the  nature  of  the  steel.  He  was  of 
the  opinion  they  would  break,  as  the  tensile 
strength,  elongation,  and  reduction  of  area  were 
practically  similar  to  those  in  the  steel  he 
was  unsuccessfully  using.  The  vanadium  steel 

17 


chosen  succeeded  triumphantly  and  that  man 
has  never  built  a  car  since  with  any  other 
kind  of  axle  steel.  Another  illustration  is 
that  of  a  friend  who  desired  shafts  for  a  three 
engine  launch,  the  shafts  to  transmit  80  h.  p. 
at  1,200  revolutions  a  minute,  through  17'  6" '. 
Carefully  checked  designs  of  these  shafts  in 
vanadium  steel,  showing  an  ample  factor  of 
safety,  only  came  out  at  \y%"  diameter,  and, 
despite  most  pessimistic  remarks  from  '  '  prac- 
tical" men,  these  shafts  behaved  perfectly 
under  the  most  exigent  trials.  The  boat 
in  which  they  were  used  won  the  race  (I  do 
not  say  because  the  shafts  were  made  of  vana- 
dium steel),  and  the  builder  stated  he  was  de- 
signing a  lot  more  launches  and  had  specified 
vanadium  steel  for  all.  The  steel  he  had  been 
using  before  had  higher  static  ultimate  strength, 
good  ductility  and  was  apparently  first-class 
steel,  he  was  using  a  bigger  shaft  and  yet  he 
had  been  getting  breakages. 

These  two  instances  are  typical  of  dozens. 

The  author  does  not  advocate  absolutely 
lowering  tensile  strength,  but  in  many  cases  a 
steel  possesses  all  the  tensile  strength  required, 
and  perhaps  a  little  more,  and  it  would  be 
folly  to  further  increase  tensile  strength  which 
is  not  required  at  the  expense  of  something 
essential.  The  dynamic  qualities  of  the  mate- 
rial must  be  maintained  to  insure  life  in  serv- 
ice, and  a  steel  of  the  same  ductility,  but  of 
improved  dynamic  qualities  though  of  compara- 
tively low  "strength  "  might  succeed  where  a 

18 


steel  of  merely  higher  tensile  qualities  would 
fail.  Dynamic  properties  are  not  given  suf- 
ficient consideration  in  too  many  cases. 

The  following  may  be  taken  as  showing 
the  static  power  of  vanadium  :  A  type  of  open 
hearth  vanadium  steel,  tempered  in  the  ordinary 
shop,  gave  an  elastic  limit  of  224,000  pounds 
to  the  square  inch,  ultimate  tensile  strength 
232,000  pounds,  elongation  11  per  cent.,  and 
reduction  of  area  39  per  cent.  This  type  of 
steel  is  recommended  for  certain  purposes,  but 
it  would  not  be  suitable  in  the  highest  degree 
for  a  chain  shaft  or  driving  axle,  because  it 
would  not  possess  the  best  dynamic  qualities, 
while  a  steel  of  lower  static  strength  is  amply 
able  to  meet  all  requirements  for  such  purposes. 

Vanadium  is  a  most  satisfactory  alloy  be- 
cause it  can  be  employed  so  universally.  It 
works  in  more  than  one  direction  and  the 
direction  can  be  determined  at  will.  If  the 
compounding  of  steels  is  considered  with  regard 
to  the  particular  service  they  are  required  to 
perform,  vanadium  has  placed  a  master  weapon 
in  the  hands  of  the  steel-makers. 

The  history  of  vanadium  has  not  been 
touched  upon,  because  that  probably  will  not 
interest  this  assembly  ;  nor  has  anything  been 
said  as  to  the  natural  occurrence  of  vanadium, 
as  this  latter  is  a  question  of  more  interest  to 
the  steel-maker. 

CHAIRMAN  :  Gentlemen,  you  have  heard 
Mr.  Kent  Smith's  very  interesting  remarks  on 
vanadium  steel.  The  subject  is  now  open  for 

19 


discussion.      This  seems  to  be  a  kind  of  ultima 
thule.  that  we  have  been  looking  for. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  I  would  like  to  ask  Mr. 
Kent  Smith  what  that  alternating  impact  test 
is?  How  it  differs  from  what  we  call  the  alter- 
nating stress  test,  where  we  rotate  the  piece. 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  In  the  test  I  use 
the  test  piece  is  held  vertically.  When  the 
"tool"  moves  forward  it  hits  the  specimen, 
deflects  it  and  moves  it  beyond  its  elastic  limit. 
It  is  really  an  alternate  bending — very  rapidly 
performed  —  partly  by  impact.  I  have  a  few 
bars  here  that  were  run  through  on  a  machine 
that  I  fitted  up  temporarily.  There  is  one 
thing  I  ought  to  say  about  the  tests ;  in  this 
system  of  testing  the  bar  ought  to  be  polished 
with  a  glassy  surface ;  with  rough  samples,  you 
get  widely  discordant  results,  the  tool  marks 
being  miniature  notches.  These  were  run 
through  in  a  hurry  (showing  samples)  and 
almost  exactly  follow  work  previously  done  by 
me,  though  I  never  publish  figures  obtained 
on  specimens  like  these,  because  I  do  not  think 
it  would  be  fair  information  for  anybody.  The 
deflection  is  done  by  a  combination  of  impact 
and  push. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  How  did  the  vanadium 
steel  compare  with  a  very  good  high-carbon 
steel ? 

MR.   KENT  SMITH  :     Taking   a'  sub-satu- 
rated steel  and  a  super-saturated  carbon  steel, 
my  experience   is   that   the   latter    goes   very 
quickly  —  comparatively. 
20 


MR.  MAXIM  :  By  very  quickly,  what  do 
you  mean  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :     It  soon  breaks. 

MR.    MAXIM  :     How  many  alternations  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  A  high-carbon  steel 
(super-saturated)  might  run.  perhaps  100.  As 
regards  vanadium,  I  made  some  tests  in  Sheffield 
for  demonstration  to  a  high  official ;  the  samples 
were  tested  against  carbon  steel  that  was  sup- 
plied by  him  —  samples  of  acid  open-hearth 
steel,  officially  recommended  as  of  the  very  best 
kind  for  axles  and  connecting-rod  bolts  and 
giving  most  excellent  static  results.  That  of 
course  was  a  sub-saturated  steel ;  it  ran  about 
290  alternations  before  it  fractured.  An  ex- 
cellent quality  of  nickel  steel  went  about  270. 
A  sample  of  vanadium  steel,  which  was  statically 
comparable  with  the  nickel  steel,  instead  of 
going  290  went  570.  That  is  a  test  ratio  of 
practically  two  to  one ;  in  life  it  would  be 
enormously  greater  as  before  stated.  Tempered 
vanadium  steel  alternated  under  the  same  con- 
ditions, with  a  static  strength  which  is  double 
that  of  the  vanadium  steel  already  quoted  and 
with  practically  the  same  ductility,  instead  of 
570  ran  480. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  Can  you  give  us  an  idea, 
if  you  should  use  a  piece  of  wrought  iron  in 
that  test  what  the  result  would  be  ? 

MR.  KENT   SMITH  :     A  piece  of  wrought 

iron  on  the   same   machine  went   about  270, 

almost  exactly  the   same  as   the   nickel   steel. 

You  have  a  different  condition  from  the  pure 

21 


vibration  test  in  the  test  I  am  speaking  of,  because 
there  is  a  serious  deflection  accompanied  by 
shock.  The  "  power  ' '  goes  on  all  of  a  sudden. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  Does  it  make  any  differ- 
ence whether  it  is  very  quick  or  very  slow  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Yes,  a  very  big  dif- 
ference. You  must  adopt  standard  conditions 
as  to  rate,  size  of  test  piece,  and  way  of  grip- 
ping (being  careful  not  to  cut  the  specimen). 
You  must  have  the  same  length  of  bar  under 
test.  Prof.  Arnold  is  now,  I  believe,  working 
out  an  elaborate  series  of  tests,  getting  at  the 
different  co-efficients  of  time  and  deflection. 
He  has  taken  several  thousand  pieces  of  the 
steel  which  is  so  strongly  recommended  as  giv- 
ing excellent  results,  and  he  has  treated  them 
all  in  the  same  way. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  Results  are  obtained  very 
quickly? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Yes.  I  use  round 
specimens,  as  I  have  found  the  results  were  abso- 
lutely concordant  amongst  themselves,  though 
you  cannot  compare  them  exactly  with  results 
obtained  on  square  specimens.  The  round 
specimen  is  easier  to  prepare ;  a  round  piece  six 
inches  long  does  not  take  long  to  turn  on  the 
lathe,  nor  does  it  take  long  to  polish  it  with  a 
fine  emery  powder.  If  you  have  the  con- 
ditions I  was  speaking  of  just  now,  it  is  a 
good  steel  that  goes  a  minute  under  test. 
Giving  half  a  minute  for  fixing  in  the  grip  and 
half  a  minute  for  putting  down  the  results,  etc., 
does  not  make  it  a  very  long  test. 
22 


MR.  MAXIM  :  Can  you  get  those  testing 
machines  on  the  market  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Prof.  Arnold  is  mak- 
ing them  in  England.  The  tests  I  have  made 
here  were  done  on  a  temporary  machine.  I 
hope  Mr.  Souther  will  use  one  of  those 
machines,  so  that  we  can  all  get  comparable 
results. 

MR.  WILKINSON:  I  would  like  to  know 
how  these  results  would  compare  if,  instead  of 
carrying  the  strain  beyond  the  elastic  limit,  you 
carried  the  strain  inside  the  elastic  limit. 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  There  can  be  no 
absolute  comparison,  for  in  one  case  you  have 
a  very  variable  factor,  and  in  the  other  case 
you  are  getting  at  the  fundamental  quality  of 
the  metal  to  resist  intermolecular  disintegra- 
tion. It  is  the  combination  of  those  two  tests 
that,  in  my  opinion,  is  very  important.  For 
an  axle  or  a  connecting-rod  I  believe  strongly 
in  the  test  I  have  just  described. 

MR.  WILKINSON  :  I  think  you  did  not 
quite  understand  my  question.  You  strain  the 
material  beyond  the  elastic  limit,  and  then 
perhaps  your  piece  of  vanadium  steel  will  stand 
quite  as  many  alternations  as  a  piece  of  nickel 
steel  with  equal  tensile  strength. 

MR.   KENT  SMITH  :     It  stands  far  more. 

MR.  WILKINSON  :  Now,  if  you  put  them 
both  in  and  strain  them  only  to  one -half  the 
elastic  limit,  will  the  vanadium  show  up  more 
than  twice? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :     Certainly  it  will.      I 

23 


worked  with  Prof.  Stead  for  some  time  on 
vibration  tests;  his  test  is  different  from  that 
of  Mr.  Souther;  he  uses  a  small  cylindrical 
test  piece  filleted.  There  we  have  had  perhaps 
three  or  four  different  steels  giving  practically 
the  same  rotary  vibration  results.  They  had 
not  the  same  elastic  limit ;  and  when  we  put 
them  on  the  alternating  impact  machine  they 
showed  quite  different  figures.  As  I  said, 
there  can  be  no  absolute  comparison  between 
the  results,  the  two  conditions  being  so  funda- 
mentally different.  It  would  almost  be  like 
trying  to  deduce  dynamic  qualities  from  a  static 
test. 

MR.  SOUTHER:  Mr.  Chairman,  I  think 
I  reflect  the  feeling  of  the  others  present  when 
1  say  it  is  a  great  pleasure  to  have  a  man  come 
here  from  the  other  side  of  the  water  and  con- 
firm some  of  our  notions.  Mr.  Kent  Smith 
has  brought  out  the  great  value  of  the  dynamic 
test  as  compared  with  the  static  test.  He  has 
grown  up  in  about  the  same  era  and  generation 
that  I  have  in  the  steel  business  apparently, 
and  with  very  much  the  same  results.  In  the 
old  days,  when  the  government  inspected  the 
steel  at  the  steel  works,  the  static  test  —  the 
plain  tensile  test  or  torsion  or  bend  —  was 
considered  final  by  everybody.  That  notion 
I  came  to  New  England  with,  and  lived  with 
a  while  before  I  discovered  that  a  rapidly 
moving  machine,  a  machine  subjected  to  shock, 
was  different  from  a  bridge  or  the  rivets  in  a 
ship.  I  was  put  up  against  the  bicycle  prob- 

24 


lem,  and  next  against  the  automobile  problem. 
As  Mr.  Kent  Smith  has  made  plain,  here  is 
required  the  greatest  resistance  to  shock. 
Consequently,  the  idea  of  a  dynamic  test, 
alternations  of  load  combined  with  shock,  was 
brought  forcibly  to  my  attention,  and  I  hunted 
around  to  find  an  endurance  or  alternating 
stress  machine.  I  found  that  one  existed  at 
Watertown,  and  I  equipped  one  and  obtained 
results ;  and  recently,  as  you  all  know,  another 
one  has  been  developed  which  is  very  much 
easier  to  use.  It  has,  however,  the  drawback 
of  being  slow  in  its  results. 

I  had  known  of  these  alternating  bending 
tests;  that  is  what  they  amount  to,  for  you 
bend  the  steel  beyond  its  elastic  limit  and  bend 
it  back  again.  Horseshoe  people  use  it  and 
axle  people  use  it  to  bend  axles  backward  and 
forward  under  a  drop ;  and  I,  of  course,  had 
read  of  this  Arnold  machine.  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  its  greatest  merit  is  in  its  quick 
results.  I  have  not  been  able  to  feel  that  a 
test  could  be  of  greatest  value  that  bent  a 
specimen  beyond  its  elastic  limit.  Suppose  we 
bend  an  axle  on  an  automobile.  If  we  bend  it 
much,  we  are  out  of  business.  We  do  not  go 
over  another  rock  and  bend  it  back  again. 
What  we  actually  do  is  to  bend  it  within  its 
elastic  limit  an  immense  number  of  times. 
That  is  the  result  that  we  get  from  the 
endurance  machine.  I  believe  it  reproduces 
as  nearly  as  possible  what  we  do  on  the  road. 
Nevertheless,  I  think  that  if  this  bending  test 

25 


is  a  quick  measure  of  the  same  thing,  we  want 
to  use  it  frequently. 

Mr.  Kent  Smith  has  given  to  the  old 
idea  of  crystallization  a  name  which,  I  think, 
is  a  fine  one.  It  is  ' '  intermolecular  disinteg- 
ration." It  exactly  conveys  to  my  mind  what 
happens  when  an  axle  drops  off  on  a  smooth 
piece  of  road ;  as  we  all  know  it  does.  It  drops 
off  more  often,  according  to  my  observance, 
when  it  is  running  quietly  along  a  decent  piece 
of  road  than  it  does  going  over  a  hump.  I 
had  various  experiences  of  the  same  kind  in 
connection  with  bicycles,  for  I  have  been  rid- 
ing a  bicycle  and  something  has  dropped  off 
when  there  was  absolutely  no  cause  for  it. 

What  I  would  like  to  know,  and  it  cannot 
be  answered  yet  —  I  think  Mr.  Kent  Smith  will 
bear  me  out  —  is  if  there  is  any  relation  exist- 
ing between  the  bending  and  endurance  tests, 
the  endurance  test  within  the  elastic  limit  and 
the  endurance  test  where  there  is  an  actual 
bending.  I  hardly  think  the  results  are  well 
enough  known  to  draw  a  conclusion. 

Also  I  want  to  ask  one  or  two  practical 
questions.  I  know  some  of  the  members  have 
them  in  their  mind.  Does  the  addition  of  a 
small  amount  of  vanadium  and  the  existence 
of  it  in  the  steel  increase  the  life  of  a  plain 
carbon  steel  ?  Next,  does  it  increase  the  life 
of  nickel  steel?  Does  it  increase  the  life  and 
endurance  of  chrome-nickel  or  silico-man- 
ganese,  and  so  on? — all  of  which  interests  us. 
Further,  does  the  addition  of  vanadium  to  a 

26 


carbon  steel  increase  the  difficulty  of  machining 
or  forging  the  steel?  And,  similarly,  does  it 
increase  the  ductility  and  ease  of  machining 
or  forging  the  other  steels  ? 

In  conclusion,  I  should  add  that  we  have 
just  now  finished  a  test  on  some  vanadium 
specimens  in  our  laboratory  at  Hartford  and 
the  results  bear  out  what  Mr.  Kent  Smith 
has  said  about  endurance.  The  vanadium 
specimen  has  run  one  hundred  million  revolu- 
tions. I  did  not  succeed  in  breaking  it  under 
the  fiber  stress  adopted  as  our  stress.  Mr.  Kent 
Smith  and  I  talked  over  various  modifications 
of  the  test  and  there  is  one,  I  think,  should  be 
tried,  to  hasten  the  result.  It  is  to  take  the 
fiber  stress,  which  we  have  now  adopted  as 
being  standard,  53,000  pounds  to  the  square 
inch,  and  run  a  specimen,  say,  ten  thousand 
revolutions.  If  it  does  not  break,  increase  the 
fiber  stress  10,000  pounds  and  run  it  another 
ten  thousand  revolutions ;  and  so  on,  increasing 
the  fiber  stress  every  ten  thousand  revolutions. 
We  are  driven  to  this  by  exactly  what  Mr. 
Kent  Smith  stated :  that  maybe  the  steel  has 
gone  " beyond  its  life"  and  the  ordinary  fiber 
stress  will  not  break  these  steels  within  a 
reasonable  length  of  time. 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  With  regard  to  the 
tests,  Mr.  Souther  has  brought  out  a  point 
which  I  am  very  glad  to  have  the  opportunity 
of  saying  a  few  words  upon.  Mr.  Souther 
asked  about  the  relation  between  the  Arnold 
test  and  the  pure  vibration  test.  As  I  said 

27 


before,  I  did  not  quite  see  how  there  could  be 
any  relation  between  the  two  because  of  the 
absolutely  different  conditions.  But  with  the 
modified  form  of  rotary  vibration  tests  Mr. 
Souther  speaks  of,  namely,  keeping  on  increas- 
ing the  load,  it  is  likely  there  will  be  some 
interesting  relationship  established  between 
some  of  the  various  forms  of  dynamic  tests. 
Of  course,  the  great  value  that  is  attached  to 
this  Arnold  test  is  that  the  distortion  of  the 
metal  is  practically  accomplished,  one-half  by 
steady  push  and  one-half  by  shock ;  and  my 
own  notion  has  always  been  that  in  practice 
we  had  to  study  the  combination  of  the  two, 
especially,  I  take  it,  in  the  trade  in  which  the 
gentlemen  here  assembled  are  interested,  be- 
cause you  all  have  to  study  the  question  of  pure 
vibration  accompanied  by  shock.  Say  you 
have  an  axle  rotating:  it  is  rotating  against 
counter-weight,  and  there  are  shocks  which 
shift  the  moment  of  fiber  stress  on  the  axle 
with  regard  to  the  elastic  limit,  some  shocks 
applied  having  practically  the  effect  of  shifting 
the  point  of  fiber  stress  much  nearer  the  elastic 
limit  according  to  their  greater  magnitude. 

As  regards  the  addition  of  vanadium  to  car- 
bon steel,  I  say  if  the  carbon  steel  is  pure  and  of 
a  good  grade,  that  vanadium  will  increase  the 
life  very  much.  It  is  impossible  to  give  actual 
"life"  figures,  but  in  some  tests  that  were 
made  with  plain  carbon  steel  under  practically 
the  same  conditions  as  I  have  stated  —  the  thirty 
carbon  steel,  already  quoted  —  ran  290.  A 

28 


lower  carbon  steel  ran  about  280.  Wrought 
iron  ran  270.  A  sample  of  steel  of  the  same 
carbon  as  that  which  had  run  280  with  the 
addition  of  vanadium  showed  about  450.  The 
effect  of  the  simple  addition  of  vanadium  to  a 
low  carbon  steel  raises  the  tensile  strength  and 
elastic  limit  of  that  steel  somewhat,  but  still  not 
so  considerably  as  if  it  had  another  element 
to  act  through. 

Now,  in  regard  to  the  action  of  vanadium 
on  nickel  steel  as  to  increasing  life.  I  have  not 
yet  found  any  intensified  nickel  steel  —  whether 
it  was  intensified  by  vanadium  or  chrome  —  to 
have  really  a  considerable  measure  of  longer 
"life  "  when  tested  beyond  its  elastic  limit.  I 
believe  in  the  intensifying  of  chrome  by  vana- 
dium where  "dynamics"  are  in  question. 
Where  the  requirements  are  much  more  static 
than  dynamic,  or  in  equal  proportion  of  both, 
then  I  consider  the  vanadium-nickel  steel  is  supe- 
rior. I  am  speaking  now  of  the  experience  I 
had  in  vanadium-nickel  steel  over  a  few  years ; 
but  I  have  not  had  any  such  experience  in  it  as 
I  have  in  vanadium-chrome  steel.  The  results 
that  have  been  obtained  in  the  automobile  trade 
have  been  almost  entirely  in  regard  to  vanadium- 
chrome. 

(A  few  of  the  properties  of  the  different 
types  of  vanadium  steel  are  shown  in  the 
appended  tables. ) 

There  is  one  point  that  Mr.  Souther  asked 
that  has  a  very  great  bearing,  I  think,  to  the 
practical  man,  the  question  of  machining. 

29 


Vanadium  steel  machines  nicely,  a  vanadium- 
chrome  steel  machining  almost  like  a  carbon 
steel.  There  is  no  difference  practically  ob- 
servable in  machining  a  carbon  axle  and  a 
vanadium-chrome  axle.  It  is  almost  the  same 
in  a  crankshaft :  a  vanadium-chrome  steel  shaft 
is  a  little  stiffer  to  machine  than  an  ordinary 
carbon  crankshaft,  but  it  is  certainly  no  more 
difficult  to  machine  than  the  ordinary  nickel 
crankshaft,  and  it  is  nothing  like  as  difficult 
as  the  nickel-chrome  crankshaft, 

In  forging  and  hot  working,  the  vana- 
dium steels,  like  all  other  steels  of  high  temper, 
must  be  treated  carefully  in  the  first  heating. 
High  carbon  steel  cannot  be  heated  in  the  first 
stage  with  the  same  drastic  procedure  that  a 
low  carbon  steel  can  be  heated  ;  the  heat  is 
applied  at  first  reasonably  slowly.  In  a  con- 
tinuous billet  furnace,  where  you  begin  fairly 
cool  and  finish  hot,  you  have  the  ideal  condi- 
tions for  heating  any  class  of  steel.  I  do 
not  mean  that  you  should  treat  billets  by 
"hand  warming,"  but  put  them  into  the  rea- 
sonably hot  furnace  and  then  raise  the  furnace 
heat.  One  should  not  put  a  billet  of  any  kind 
of  steel  into  a  really  hot  furnace,  otherwise 
you  get  the  bursting  effect ;  and  the  high-temper 
steels  are  more  susceptible  to  disintegration  by 
such  heating  than  the  low-temper.  In  actual 
forging  and  drop  forging  the  vanadium  steels 
are  almost  as  easily  worked  as  plain  carbon 
steels  of  the  same  types. 

There  is  not  as  much  difficulty  in  hammer- 
so 


forging  vanadium-chrome  steel  as  there  is  in 
forging  ordinary  nickel  steel ;  if  you  add  vana- 
dium to  nickel  it  makes  it  no  more  difficult  to 
forge  than  plain  nickel  steel,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, easier.  I  have  always  regarded  the  most 
useful  field  for  vanadium  as  in  the  quaternary 
steels. 

MR.  SOUTHER  :  Have  you  any  reason  to 
believe  that  the  addition  of  vanadium  would 
injure  chrome-nickel  or  the  other  alloys  that 
you  have  mentioned? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  No.  It  certainly  will 
not. 

MR.  SOUTHER  :  Have  you  any  reason  to 
believe  that  it  would  help  them? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  I  think  it  would  help 
them. 

MR.  SOUTHER  :  You  have  no  evidence  to 
be  able  to  state  that  vanadium  nickel  is  bad  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Certainly  not,  but 
that  I  find,  when  it  comes  to  a  combination  of 
static  and  dynamic  qualities  that  vanadium- 
chrome  is  the  best  combination ;  where  the 
conditions  to  be  considered  are  practically  half 
one  and  half  the  other,  or  even  more  static  than 
dynamic,  I  have  found  vanadium  and  nickel  a 
good  combination  without  a  doubt.  No  man 
has  a  higher  opinion  of  nickel  steel  than  I 
have.  Nickel  steel  is  a  splendid  thing;  but 
the  chief  fault  about  it  is  that  too  much  has 
been  claimed  for  it.  When  it  comes  to  be  a 
question  of  dynamics,  then  we  have  a  special 
question. 

31 


MR.  SOUTHER  :  Have  you  successfully 
used  or  seen  used  chrome-vanadium  steel  for 
gears,  and,  if  so,  what  was  the  effect  as  to  case- 
hardening;  or  could  it  be  hardened  in  the 
ordinary  way? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH:  I  can  answer  that 
question  almost  absolutely  by  instances.  I 
have  used  chrome-vanadium  steel  both  hard- 
ened and  case-hardened.  For  gears  in  contin- 
ual mesh  I  use  hardened  steel  (something 
between  crankshaft  composition  and  spring 
composition  as  far  as  actual  chemical  composi- 
tion goes)  with  excellent  results.  Several 
auto-makers  in  England  are  using  it  very 
largely.  Vanadium  case-hardened  steel  is 
very  largely  used  over  the  water.  One  gen- 
tleman, who  is  in  absolute  charge  of  the  build- 
ing of  a  very  high-grade  car  there,  will  not 
use  any  other  kind  of  case-hardening  steel.  He 
says  he  gets  results  out  of  the  case-hardening 
type  of  chrome-vanadium  steel  that  he  cannot 
duplicate  with  any  other  case-hardening  steel  he 
has.  I  am  a  strong  advocate  of  case-hardening 
sliding  gears. 

CHAIRMAN  :  Do  you  draw  the  temper  of 
the  case-hardened  gear? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  No.  I  carburize  a 
mild  vanadium  steel,  the  carburized  article 
being  allowed  to  cool  slowly.  Crystalline 
fractures  are  very  noticeable  at  this  stage.  (I 
have  followed  the  crystalline  fracture  micro- 
scopically in  another  place. )  I  then  reheat  the 
cased  article  to  850  or  900  degrees  Centigrade 

32 


in  a  non-oxidizing  atmosphere  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, and  quench  it  in  warm  water.  Some 
people  want  absolute  glass-hardness,  but  I 
personally  have  not  found  that  to  give  such 
excellent  wearing  results  in  case-hardening ;  I 
do  not  say  I  want  the  article  soft,  but  just 
"rough  "  to  a  smooth  file.  Therefore  I  quench 
in  warm  water.  If  I  want  glass-hardness  I 
quench  in  cold  water,  salt  and  water,  or  potash 
and  water. 

MR.  ELWOOD  HAYNES  :  I  would  like  to 
ask  Mr.  Kent  Smith  one  or  two  questions. 
First,  whether  he  has  ever  noticed  any  increase 
in  the  rigidity  or  what  is  usually  termed  modulus 
of  elasticity  in  the  vanadium  steel  or  any  of 
its  combinations;  or  whether  he  has  ever 
observed  any  increase  in  this  property  in  any 
steel  over  the  ordinary  carbon  steel?  Secondly, 
whether  it  is  essential  for  any  of  the  vanadium 
to  remain  in  the  vanadium  steel,  in  order  to 
give  the  special  properties  of  vanadium  steel ; 
or  whether  it  acts  the  same  as  magnesium  does 
on  impure  nickel  ?  for  if  you  introduce  a  little 
magnesium  into  nickel  it  totally  changes  the 
property  of  the  nickel,  and  renders  it  plastic 
instead  of  brittle.  Thirdly,  what  is  the  compo- 
sition of  the  steels  that  are  exhibited  here,  as 
to  their  carbon,  chrome,  and  vanadium  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  .  I  have  no  absolute 
figures  on  the  modulus  of  elasticity  as  yet —  I 
recently  supplied  a  large  number  of  vanadium 
samples  to  one  of  the  colleges  in  London,  Eng- 
land, and  am  expecting  the  results  in  by  any 
33 


mail.  As  regards  rigidity,  the  vanadium-chrome 
steels  are  more  rigid  than  the  carbon  steels 
used  for  the  same  purpose.  You  get  a  greater 
rigidity  and  therefore  you  can  use  a  slightly  less 
area.  But  I  cannot  put  this  into  figures  until  I 
have  those  modulus  of  elasticity  results  in  front 
of  me ;  the  moment  I  receive  them  a  copy  shall 
be  mailed  to  you.  I  had  no  apparatus  for 
determining  accurately  the  modulus  of  elasticity, 
nor  the  time  to  go  very  deeply  into  that  ques- 
tion. That  part  of  the  vanadium  study  was  by 
no  means  overlooked,  but,  unfortunately,  the 
man  that  took  it  up  was  unable  to  finish  it,  his 
health  breaking  down,  so  I  had  to  go  all  over  it 
again.  It  is  an  extensive  series  of  investiga- 
tions and  the  ordinary  engineering  college  is 
not  famed  for  working  exceedingly  quickly; 
its  work  is  accurate  rather  than  quick,  as  a 
general  rule.  I  am  expecting  those  results  in 
time;  in  the  meantime,  as  the  result  of  shop 
figures,  I  can  positively  say  that  you  will  find 
vanadium  steel  more  rigid  than  carbon  steel  for 
the  same  purpose. 

With  regard  to  the  question  as  to  whether 
it  is  necessary  for  vanadium  to  remain  in  the 
steel,  I  answer  that  strongly  in  the  affirmative. 
Vanadium  is  an  * '  elusive  ' '  element.  If  there 
is  any  oxide  left  in  the  steel  the  vanadium  will 
scavenge  it  out ;  but  vanadium  is  an  expensive 
scavenger.  You  want  your  vanadium  left  in 
to  both  statically  intensify  and  to  give  dynamic 
quality  to  the  metal.  It  will  do  the  scavenging 
in  preference  to  anything  else,  because  it  is 

34 


the  easiest  work.  Hence  there  is  little  use  in 
adding  vanadium  to  an  oxidized  steel,  because 
you  will  not  find  the  vanadium  in  the  steel. 
I  have  said  already  that  it  does  not  follow  that 
because  you  put  a  certain  amount  of  vanadium 
in  the  steel  that  vanadium  is  there.  That  is 
why  so  many  of  the  old  results  went  wrong, 
because  vanadium  was  just  put  into  the  steel,  no 
consideration  being  given  to  the  oxidation  of 
the  steel  itself  or  the  oxidizing  conditions  that 
were  the  concomitants  of  the  vanadium  addi- 
tion. The  vanadium  did  its  easiest  work  first, 
and  its  easiest  work  was  to  combine  with 
oxygen.  Commercial  nickel  contains  a  con- 
siderable quantity  of  oxides.  There  are  prob- 
ably many  people  who  have  more  extensive 
sources  of  information  on  that  point  than  I 
have ;  one  should  not  base  an  opinion  on  just  a 
few  spasmodic  trials,  but  I  found  that  by  the 
very  careful  use  of  aluminum  in  the  oxidized 
metal  I  could  get  practically  as  good  results  as 
with  magnesium,  though  if  I  used  a  little  too 
much  aluminum  the  nickel  alloy  remaining  had 
nothing  like  the  properties  of  the  pure  nickel. 
As  regards  the  composition  of  these  steels 
before  us  I  am  glad  to  say  anything  I  can. 
The  steels  are  basic  steels.  This  is  an  oil-tem- 
pered crankshaft  steel  (producing  samples). 
This  is  a  cold  bend  of  the  same.  It  con- 
tains about  .25%  carbon,  1.0%  chromium,  and 
.18%  vanadium.  Its  elastic  limit  is  about 
110,000  to  120,000  pounds  to  the  square  inch, 
its  ultimate  strength  about  140,000;  the 

35 


elongation  on  two  inches  about  21  or  22%, 
and  the  contraction  of  area  between  56  and 
60%.  I  may  here  say  that  I  have  invari- 
ably, as  the  result  of  twelve  years'  pretty  close 
watching,  found  the  bend  to  follow  the  con- 
traction of  area  and  not  the  elongation.  The 
average  elongation,  I  take  it,  is  very  largely  a 
measure  of  longitudinal  flow;  if  the  metal 
flows  inward  the  elongation  will  be  very  much 
less,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  steel  is  any 
less  ductile.  I  do  not  bother  my  head  about 
the  elongation  unless  I  know  both  the  general 
and  local  elongations,  and  as  a  measure  of 
strength  I  always  look  at  the  elastic  limit  pure 
and  simple.  We  used  to  judge  steel  by 
tensile  strength  and  elongation,  but  those 
things  are  in  the  far-away  now.  I  always  run 
my  carbon  a  little  higher  in  basic  steel  than 
I  do  in  acid  steel.  D  (spring  type)  will  run 
nearly  .  50  %  carbon ;  manganese  from  .  8  %  to 
1%,  with  1.25%  of  chrome,  while  I  use 
about  the  same  amount  of  vanadium  as  before. 
I  use  the  vanadium  as  a  "master."  In  the 
case-hardening  type,  with  perhaps  .12  to  .15% 
carbon,  very  low  manganese,  and  about  0.3% 
chrome,  the  vanadium  will  run  .12  to  .15%. 
Vanadium  steel  is  very  susceptible  to  quench- 
ing as  I  think  that  sample  that  I  showed  you 
demonstrated,  and  the  finished  article  in  case- 
hardening  is  a  quenched  article,  be  it  remem- 
bered, therefore,  for  case-hardening  we  must 
use  an  initially  "dead  mild"  vanadium  steel. 
Vanadium  is  a  very  powerful  weapon ; 

36 


indeed,  vanadium  in  steel  is  comparable  to 
strychnine  in  medicine.  A  little  is  a  splen- 
did tonic,  but  if  you  give  too  much  you  kill 
your  patient.  I  look  on  vanadium  to  metal- 
lurgy as  strychnine  to  medicine,  for  I  defeat 
my  own  ends  if  I  use  too  much,  though  if  I  use 
in  ordinary  case-hardening  steel  only  .02%  or 
.04%  vanadium  I  will  not  get  as  good  a  result 
as  by  using  .15%. 

MR.  SOUTHER  :  That  is  remaining  in  the 
steel? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  That  is  remaining 
in  the  steel.  The  question  of  how  much 
remains  in  the  steel  and  how  much  goes  out, 
is,  of  course,  a  steel-maker's  question;  but  I 
never  had  any  difficulty  in  adding  vanadium 
with  about  10  per  cent.  loss.  There  is  no  dif- 
ficulty whatever  from  a  technical  steel-making 
point  of  view  in  adding  vanadium.  It  prac- 
tically accompanies  the  addition  of  silicon. 
The  thing  is  adding  it  properly  and  at  the 
right  time.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  an  intel- 
ligent interpretation  of  the  higher  principles 
of  steel -making. 

When  I  was  connected  with  vanadium 
steel-making  we  used  to  run  a  lot  of  grades  for 
different  purposes.  We  varied  the  grades 
slightly  according  to  the  conditions  to  be 
met ;  some  typical  grades  of  steel  for  automo- 
biles are  shown  in  tables  1,  2,  3,  4,  and  5.  We 
would  run  a  separate  grade  for  railway  tire- 
work  and  so  on,  as  we  would  also  run  a  grade 
for  connecting-rod  bolts.  There  was  a  differ- 

37 


ence  in  each,  and  the  difference  was  not  so  much 
in  the  vanadium  as  in  the  relation  of  the  other 
constituents;  that  is,  the  carbon,  manganese, 
and  chrome  —  it  being  taken  for  granted,  of 
course,  that  sulphur  and  phosphorus  were  low. 

MR.  SOUTHER  :  How  low  do  you  regard 
it  necessary  to  have  phosphorus? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  The  lower  the  better. 
We  made  it  .02%  and  .03$,  and  I  would  not 
care  to  go  above  .03%  of  each.  Of  course,  in 
acid  steel  you  must  run  a  lower  carbon  com- 
paratively. I  prefer  a  carefully-refined  basic 
steel ;  that  is,  I  think,  the  highest  grade  of  steel 
that  we  can  get  out  of  the  open  hearth.  I 
think  the  prejudice  against  basic  steel  is  dying 
out,  maybe  slowly,  but  dying  out  all  the  same ; 
and  I  think  that  prejudice  largely  arose  through 
absolute  misapprehension,  since  it  was  known 
that  basic  steel  can  be  made  from  almost  any 
kind  of  inferior  stuff.  In  my  mind  the  real 
trouble  lay  in  the  fact  that  basic  steel  is  much 
more  prone  to  oxidize  than  is  acid  steel  in  the 
furnace;  if  it  is  carefully  worked  down  and 
good  stock  used,  and  at  the  end  you  have  a 
good  non-oxidized  pure  bath,  I  think  you 
will  have  to  go  a  long  way  to  beat  steel 
made  by  the  basic  process.  Of  course,  it  is 
no  use  adding  any  alloy,  I  do  not  care  whether 
nickel,  nickel-chrome,  tungsten,  or  vanadium, 
to  impure  steel;  if  you  start  with  a  bad  foun- 
dation you  will  never  get  good  results. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  There  is  one  more  ques- 
tion I  would  like  to  ask  .Mr.  Kent  Smith.  He 

38 


spoke  about  a  transmission  shaft  which  was  very 
alarming  when  he  first  saw  it,  it  being  an  inch 
and  an  eighth  in  diameter.  When  you  make 
that  of  vanadium  and  it  stands  up  and  does  not 
break,  it  does  not  necessarily  mean,  does  it, 
that  it  does  not  spring  more  than  the  old  shaft? 

MR.   KENT  SMITH  :     No. 

MR.  MAXIM  :  In  building  automobiles  we 
frequently  meet  those  two  conditions  :  a  con- 
dition in  which  a  part  is  not  strong  enough, 
and  also  a  condition  where  it  might  spring  if  it 
was  made  of  a  better  material ;  and  springing 
in  some  of  our  work  is  very  serious.  Is  it  a 
fact  that  vanadium  steel,  although  it  is  stronger, 
springs  just  as  much,  and  therefore  when  it  is 
made  smaller  it  springs  more  than  our  ordinary 
steel  ?  For  instance,  take  a  small  crankshaft, 
although  it  would  not  break,  it  would  be  liable 
to  spring  more,  would  it  not,  and  possibly  give 
bearing  difficulty  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Possibly,  but  the  shaft 
would  have  to  be  very  light  indeed.  In  the 
particular  work  I  was  speaking  of,  the  bearing 
easily  took  care  of  any  difference,  as  the  old 
shaft  was  very  well  supported  all  the  way  down. 

CHAIRMAN  :  What  would  be  the  cost  of 
vanadium  steel  in  comparison  to  nickel-chrome 
or  nickel  steel  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  There  is  no  question 
of  the  cost  being  prohibitive.  Vanadium  steel 
can  be  furnished —  we  are  not  steel-makers  —  at 
a  price  which  does  not  exceed  the  price  of  special 
steels  to-day. 

39 


MR.  ELWOOD  HAYNES  :  In  regard  to  the 
supply  of  vanadium  —  I  would  like  to  know 
whether  its  use  is  fully  warranted.  It  is  a  very 
rare  substance,  unless  it  has  been  discovered 
in  greater  quantity  and  very  widely  diffused  and 
in  very  large  deposits.  A  man  who  started  in 
to  use  vanadium  steel  would  not  want  to  quit 
before  the  year  was  over. 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Mr.  Haynes  alludes 
to  vanadium  as  a  rare  element.  I  want  that 
impression  to  be  somewhat  modified.  Vanadium 
is  not  a  rare  element.  It  may  surprise  many  in 
this  room  to  hear  that  ordinary  soap  generally 
contains  a  quantity  of  vanadium,  because  it  is 
found  in  caustic  soda,  but  the  quantity  is 
microscopical.  The  quantities  we  have  been 
talking  of  are  huge  in  comparison.  The  aver- 
age percentage  of  vanadium  that  I  have  found 
in  caustic  soda  has  been  .004^,  and  I  found 
it  by  working  on  a  pound  or  so.  Most  fire 
clays  also  contain  vanadium.  But  vanadium 
is  comparatively  a  rare  element,  or  was  at  least 
a  short  time  ago,  when  it  came  to  the  question 
of  finding  it  in  sufficiently  concentrated  de- 
posits to  repay  extraction.  The  extraction 
of  vanadium  is  a  difficult  problem  in  itself. 
Although  there  is  a  great  deal  of  vanadium 
distributed  over  the  world  in  odd  places,  I  do 
not  think  it  is  likely  we  shall  ever  find  another 
vanadium  deposit  like  that  which  the  Ameri- 
can Vanadium  Company  has  secured  in  Peru. 
I  have  here  a  sample  from  one  of  the  main 
veins  (exhibiting).  I  think  that  if  one-half  of 

40 


the  steel  production  of  the  United  States  to-day 
was  vanadium  steel,  we  could  take  care  of  it 
as  far  as  Mother  Nature  goes,  though  we  might 
have  to  build  a  very  large  factory  to  extract 
the  necessary  amount  of  vanadium  alloy.  As 
far  as  ordinary  conditions  go  there  is  no  earthly 
likelihood  of  there  ever  being  a  shortage  of 
vanadium.  Vanadium  is  an  unique  thing  in 
metallurgy,  since  only  a  few  years  ago  vanadium 
alloys  and  salts  had  only  been  prepared  as 
' '  curiosities. ' '  Now  the  whole  subject  is  on  a 
commercial  footing ;  we  have  any  quantity  of 
vanadium  ore  and  we  are  building  a  factory  that 
is  reasonably  big  enough  to  take  care  of  all  the 
vanadium  alloy  that  is  likely  to  be  wanted  for 
a  long  time  to  come,  while  there  is  no  difficulty 
in  doubling  or  trebling  the  size  of  that  fac- 
tory. We  can  do  that  in  a  short  time,  and 
will  warrant  the  supply  at  any  time.  There  is 
no  danger  of  automobile  manufacturers  starting 
out  to  use  vanadium  steel  and  then  finding  that 
there  is  no  more  vanadium  to  be  had. 

CHAIRMAN  :  Can  vanadium  be  welded- 
easily,  heated  by  the  ordinary  process  or  the 
electric  process?  There  has  been  difficulty  in 
welding  nickel  steel  and  chrome-nickel  steel. 
Does  vanadium  increase  the  difficulty  or  de- 
crease it? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  The  presence  of  vana- 
dium, as  far  as  welding  goes,  is  beneficial  rather 
than  the  reverse,  because,  as  I  said  before,  it 
forms  a  fusible  oxide  and  thus  promotes  the 
welding  action  of  the  iron  itself.  If  taken  in 

41 


conjunction  with  chrome,  the  vanadium  being 
a  static  intensifying  element,  one  is  able  to  use 
very  much  less  chrome,  and  therefore  vanadium- 
chrome  steels  are  more  easily  welded  than 
ordinary  chrome  and  nickel  steels.  The  weld- 
ing of  vanadium-chrome  steel  does  not  present 
any  difficulty.  One  can  take  a  bar  of  steel 
containing  about  .25%  or  .30%  carbon,  cut 
the  bar  in  two,  weld  it,  and  twist  it  cold  so 
that  it  shows  several  twists,  or  take  another 
piece,  weld  it,  pull  it,  and  it  will  not  break  at 
the  weld. 

CHAIRMAN  :     How  do  you  weld  it  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  I  weld  it  in  an  ordi- 
nary blacksmith  shop  or  by  any  good  method. 

MR.  ROBERT  JARDINE  :     At  what  heat  ? 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  About  the  same  heat 
that  you  weld  an  ordinary  .20  carbon  steel. 
I  do  not  push  the  "  A  "  type  of  steel  (  see  table) 
as  welding  steel,  but  I  do  say  that  steel 
containing  vanadium  with  mild  carbon  is  as 
good  a  welding  metal  as  the  best  wrought  iron 
you  can  get.  That  is  a  very  big  statement  to 
make,  but  it  is  backed  by  fact.  As  I  said  before, 
the  influence  of  vanadium  itself  on  the  welding 
is  beneficial,  and  on  account  of  its  static  inten- 
sifying effect  you  can  use  very  much  less  of  the 
"obstinate"  alloys,  therefore  vanadium  steels 
for  all  purposes  are  much  more  easily  welded 
than  analogous  chrome-nickel  steels  or  nickel 
steel. 

CHAIRMAN  :  If  there  are  no  further  ques- 
tions you  would  like  to  ask  I  will  call  for  a  vote 

42 


of  thanks  to  the  American  Vanadium  Company 
and  also  to  Mr.  Kent  Smith  for  the  very  inter- 
esting talk  that  he  has  given  us  on  vanadium 
steel. 

MR.  MAXIM  :      I  so  move. 

The  motion  was  seconded  and  carried. 

MR.  KENT  SMITH  :  Mr.  Chairman  and 
Gentlemen,  will  you  allow  me  to  thank  you 
once  more  for  the  very  kind  invitation  you  have 
given  me.  Vanadium  is  not  only  my  business, 
it  has  been  my  hobby  for  years.  I  am  delighted 
to  talk  on  the  subject,  and  I  am  more  than 
delighted  to  talk  about  it  when  I  have  so  kind 
and  patient  a  set  of  listeners  as  I  have  had  this 
morning. 


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THE  AMERICAN  VANADIUM  COMPANY 

GENERAL  OFFICES  SUITE  302  FRICK  BUILDING 

PITTSBURGH,  PENN.,  U.  S.  A. 

COMPARATIVE  TESTS  ON  VANADIUM  &  CARBON  STEEL  SPRINGS 

TESTED  BY  THE  AMERICAN  LOCOMOTIVE  COMPANY. 

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TO  BE  RECOMMENDED  WHERE  THE  SEVEREST 
SERVICE  CONDITIONS  ARE  ENCOUNTERED. 

STATIC  TEST  ON  PIECE  CUT  FROM  LEAF  OF  SPRING. 

ELASTIC  LIMIT  227.100 
ULTIMATE  STRENGTH  237.500 
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1.  TO  62,700  LBS.  WITH  34"  CENTRES 

2.  TO  92,000  LBS.  WITH  36"  CENTRES 
3.  TO  94,000  LBS.  WITH  36"  CENTRES 
ON  SECOND  TEST,  ELASTIC  LIMIT  WAS  REACHED 
AT  85,000  LBS.  OR  234,500  LBS.  FIBRE  STRESS 
WITH  PERMANENT  SET  OF  .48'  I 

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VANADIUM  STEEL  CASTINGS 

FOR  LOCOMOTIVE  PARTS. 

FERRO-VANADIUM,  AS   AN  ALLOY,  WHEN  ADDED   TO  STEEL  IN  THE  PRO- 
CESS OF  CASTING,  HAS  A  MARKED  INFLUENCE  ON  THE  GENERAL  QUALITY 
THROUGHOUT,  CLEANSING,  BINDING  TOGETHER  THE  MOLECULAR  STRUCT- 
UREAND  IMPARTING  TO  THE  FINISHED  PRODUCT  VITALITY  WHICH  OTHER- 
WISE   WOULD    BE    LACKING,    RENDERING    RESULTS    MORE    EFFICIENT   IN 
SERVICE  WHERE  SHOCK,  STRAIN  AND  VIBRATION  ARE  CONSTANT,  YIELD- 
ING  PROPORTIONATELY  A  HIGHER   ELASTIC  STRENGTH,  AND  AFFORDING 
A  MARGIN  OF  SAFETY  ABOVE  THE   ORDINARY   STEEL    CASTING. 

COMPARATIVE  AVERAGE  TENSILE  &  VIBRATION  TEST.    ORDINARY  AND  VANADIUM  STEEL  CASTINGS. 
TEST  PIECES  TAKEN   FROM  CAST  STEEL  LOCOMOT  VE  FRAMES. 

STEEL. 

ELASTIC  LIMIT. 

ULT.  TEN.                  RATIO 
STRENGTH. 

8" 
ELONGATION. 

VIBRATIONS. 

ORDINARY. 
VANADIUM. 

36.29O 
45.62O 

68.520               52.9% 
77.8OO               58.6% 

2O% 

23% 

4206 
12776 

VIBRATION  TEST  ON  ALTERNATING  BENDING  MACHINE.     BAR  HELD  RIGID  ONE 
END,  OTHER  END  DEFLECTED  ^  'FROM  EACH  SIDE  OF  CENTRE. 

USE 

VANADIUM   STEEL  CASTINGS   FOR   THE   FOLLOWING   PARTS. 

"     AIR  BRAKE  CYLINDER  LEVERS. 

^ENGINE   FRAMES. 
'ENGINE  TRUCK  FRAMES. 
ENGINE  TRUCK  CENT.  PIN  GUIDE. 
ENGINE  TRUCK  SWING  BOLSTER. 
ENGINE  TRUCK   SWING  LINKS. 
EQUALIZER  BEAMS. 
ECCENTRICS. 
\  ECCENTRIC  STRAPS. 

P 

PILOT  FRAME  ENDS. 
PILOT  FRAME  TOPS  AND 
BOTTOM. 
PEDESTALS. 
PISTONS. 

B     BELL  CRANKS. 
BRAKE  BEAMS. 
j  BRAKE  BRACKETS. 
!   BOILER  PADS. 
BUFFERS. 

*      FIRE  BOX  MUD  RINGS. 
FOOT  PLATES. 
FRAME  STIFFENING  PIECE. 
FRAME  BRACES. 
FULCRUM  SHAFT  BEARINGS. 
FULCRUM  CASTING. 

R 

ROCKER  ARMS. 
ROCKER  BOX. 
REVERSE  SHAFTS. 
RUNBOARD  BRACKETS. 
RUBBING  OR  CHAFING  IRONS- 
RADIAL  BAR  CROSS  TIE  CAPS- 

c 

:  CROSS  HEADS. 
CROSS  HEAD  SHOES. 
:  CROSS  HEAD  ARM. 
CROSS  BRACES. 
CAB  BRACKETS. 
CYLINDER  HEADS. 
CENTRE  PLATES. 

G 

GUIDE  YOKES. 
GUIDE  YOKE  KNEES- 
GRATE  SHAFT  BEARINGS. 

S 

SIDE  BEARINGS. 
SPRING  RIGGING  POSTS- 
SPRING  SADDLES. 
SPRING  SEATS. 
SPRING  HANGER  PLATES- 
SCOOP  LEVERS. 
STEAM  CHEST. 

DRIVER  BRAKE  LEVERS. 
DRIVING  BOXES. 
DRIVING  BOX  BEAM. 
DRIVING  WHEEL  CENTRES. 
.   DRAW  HEADS. 

LINK  MOTION  SUPPORTS. 
LIFT  SHAFTS. 

T 

TRANSMISSION   BAR. 
TRAILING  TRUCK  BRAKE. 
LEVERS. 

AMERICAN  VANADIUM  COMPANY 

FRICK  BUILDING. 
PITTSBURGH,  PENN.,  U.  S.  A. 
Any.  1007                                                                                                              B.E. 

PRINT 
,s          N0'5 

48 


INDEX 

Page 
Addition   of  Vanadium  to    carbon    steel,    Effect 

of, .     .     .     .     . 26  to  29 

Addition    of    Vanadium   to    nickel    steel,    Effect 

of,.     .     .     .     .-     . .   .     .    ' 26  to  29 

Addition   of  Vanadium    to   chrome   steel,  Effect 

of, 7     .     .      .     26  to  29 

Alternating  tests,  general,  .     .     .     .     ,     .     .     .     .12 

Alternating  tests  records, 15 

Alternating  stress  tests, 20 

Alternating    impact  bends   indicate   fundamental 

quality  of  metal, 23-28 

Anti-fatigue  metal, 14 

Prof.  Arnold's  test, .     22,23,27,28 

Automobile  construction  requirements,  .  .  .  7,  8,  9 
Automobile  construction,  Grades  of  Vanadium 

steel  for, 16  and  tables 

Axles,  Vanadium  steel  for, 17,  18 

Bend  follows  contraction  of  area, 36 

Bending  and  endurance  tests,  Relation  of,  .  .  26  to  28 
Carbon  steel,  Comparative  alternating  test  of, .  .  .21 
Carbon  steel,  addition  of  Vanadium  to,  Effect 

of,.     .     .     .     .     .     .  /."'-.     .     .     26,  27,  28,  29 

Case  hardening, 17,  32 

Chairman,  Discussion  by, 19,  20 

Chrome-Vanadium  steel,  anti-fatigue  metal,  ...  14 
Chrome  steel,  addition  of  Vanadium  to,  Effect 

of, ....     .     26,  27,  28,  29 

Coefficient  of  time  and  deflection, 22 

Contraction  of  area,  Bend  follows, 31 

Crucible  Vanadium  steel,  Early, 13,  14 

Demands  on  steel,  Past  and  present, 6 

Deterioration,  Relation  of  elastic  limit  to,   ....      6 

Discussion, 20  to  43 

Discussion,  by  Chairman, 19,  20,  39,  41 

Discussion,  by  Mr.  Elwood  Haynes,  ....  33,  34 
Discussion,  by  Mr.  Maxim,  .  .  20,  21,  22,  38,  39,  43 
Discussion,  by  Mr.  Souther,  .  .  .  .  24  to  33,  37,  38 

49 


Page 
Discussion,  by  Mr.  Wilkinson, 23 

Dynamic   deterioration,  Adverse    effect   of  large 

quantities  of  alloys, 12 

Dynamic  properties  essential, 11 

Dynamic  qualities,  necessity  of  maintenance,  .  .  .18 
Dynamic  superiority  of  Vanadium  steel,  Instances 

of, 17,  18 

Early  experiments  with  Vanadium,  .  10,  11,  12,  13,  14 

Elasticity,  Modulus  of, 33,  34 

Elastic  limit,  Useful  strength  represented  by  the,  .  12,  13 
Elongation,  Measure  of  longitudinal  flow,  ...  36 

Elwood  Hayes,  Discussion  by, 33,  34 

Endurance  and  bending  tests,  Relation  of,  .  20,  27,  28 

Endurance  testing  machine, 25 

Factor  of  safety, 12,13 

Fatigue  of  metals, 6 

Ferrite, 11 

Forging  of  Vanadium  steel, 27,  30 

Gears,  Case  hardening  Chrome -Vanadium  steel 

for, 32 

Intermolecular  disintegration  of  steel,  .  .  .  .  .26 

Launch,  Transmission  shafts  for, 18 

Machining  of  Vanadium  steel, 27,  30 

Maxim,  Discussion  by,  .  .  .  .  20,  21,  22,  38,  39,  43 

Modulus  of  elasticity,  or  rigidity, 33,  34 

Mysterious  failures  of  steel, 6,  7 

Nickel  steel,  alternating  test,  Comparative,  ...  21 
Nickel  steel,  Addition  of  Vanadium  to,  ....  31 

Nickel-Vanadium  steel, 31 

Open-hearth  Vanadium  steel,  Early,  .  .  .  .  13,  14 

Pearlite,  Breaking  up  of, 11,12 

Phosphorus,  Percentage  permissible  in  Vanadium 

steel, 38 

Price  of  Vanadium  steel, 39 

Recalescence  point, 10,  11 

Rigidity,  or  modulus  of  elasticity, 33,  34 

Rotary  vibration  tests, 12,  24 

Souther,  Discussion  by,  .....  24  to  32,  37,  38 
Souther's  test  of  Vanadium  steel, 27 

50 


Page 
Spring  steel 15 

Stead's  test, 24 

Static  power  of  Vanadium, 19 

Strains  below  elastic  limit,  Tests  of, 23 

Strains,  Relation  to  rupture, 5,  6 

Stresses,  Gradual  and  sudden, 7 

Subsaturated  steel, 10,  11 

Subsaturated  carbon,  nickel,  and  Vana'dium  steels, 

Alternating  tests  of,     .     .     .     .     .     .      .      .      .21 

Supply  of  Vanadium,  .  ,-."..  .  .  ...  .40 

Swedish  iron  containing  Vanadium, It,  10 

Test  pieces,  Standard  conditions, 22 

Tests,  Alternating,  Comparative,  ......  21 

Tests,  Alternating,  Impact, 20 

Tests,  Alternating  under  "life"  conditions,  .  .  15,  16 

Tests,  Alternating  stress, 12,  20 

Tests,  Alternating  stress  records 15 

Tests,  Prof.  Arnold's,    .     .     ...     .     22,  23,  27,  28 

Tests,  Bending  and  endurance,  Relation  of,  2H,  27,  28 

Tests,  Illogical, 8,  9 

Tests,  Machine  for  endurance, 25 

Tests,  Rotary  vibration, 12,  24 

Tests,  Strains  below  elastic  limit, 28 

Transmission  shafts, 18 

Vanadium,  Master  weapon  for  steel  makers,  .  .  .19 
Vanadium,  Necessary  that  it  remain  in  the 

steel '.....  33,  34,  35 

Vanadium,  Percentage  of  loss  by  oxidation,  ...  37 

Vanadium,  Supply  of, 40 

Vanadium  steel,  Price  of, 39 

Vanadium  steel,  Forging  of,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  27,  30 

Vanadium  steel,  Machining  of, 27,  30 

Vanadium  steel,  Welding  of, 41,  42 

Vanadium  steel,  Unbroken  after  100  million 

revolutions,  Souther  test, 27 

Welding  of  Vanadium  steel, 41,  42 

Wilkinson,  Discussion  by,  .  . 23 

Wrought  iron,  Comparative  alternating  test,  .  .  .21 


61 


photomount 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros.,  Inc. 

Makers 
Stockton,  Calif. 

PAT  IAN.  21.  1908 


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